


Hellfire

by sunshinestealer



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-21
Updated: 2015-06-21
Packaged: 2018-04-05 12:17:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4179558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunshinestealer/pseuds/sunshinestealer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sephiroth's rage, prior to burning down Nibelheim.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hellfire

It takes a few days for Genesis’ words to fully sink in. In a more shrewd frame of mind, Sephiroth might realise that he’s following a predictable and scientifically-proven psychological structure. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. But, this form of misery is much more difficult to fathom in person.

He knows he should take a deep breath and remember that these reactions - the constant thud of his heart, the knot of nausea in his stomach, and the rage, the pure hatred and anger at everything - is all part of the structure of coping with grief, or terrible news.

Everybody goes through it.

Or do they?

Notes are strewn across the tables in the laboratory archives, books left open at the pages containing the most damning evidence. He’s been down here for more than five days, occasionally allowing himself some sleep and a drink of water. Otherwise, he’s been studying these texts, mind racing at the endless possibilities. Who he really is,  _what_  he really is. Genesis may have gone on a rambling speech about Sephiroth being an experimental monster, and how he himself is just a flawed deviation from the perfect genetic formula that would eventually create you. Robbed of a decent childhood, forced to endure endless tests and channeled into the military the moment they could be convinced to take him in. 

Sephiroth’s mind is his own worst enemy. He has never suffered from a lack of self-confidence, but he has often lain awake at night pondering his existence. 

Some time ago he realised that if he were to remove everything Shinra-related from his life, there would be nothing of him left. Just a husk of a child, without a mother or a place to call home. Does he exist as a person, or just as property of the Shinra Company? The President crows at Sephiroth every time they meet, reminding him of how grateful he is to have such an ‘asset.’ He has overheard similar comments from Hojo and other members in the upper echelons of the military. It shouldn’t bother Sephiroth nearly as much as it does in his private hours.

There are a few days left on this assignment in Nibelheim. 

Sephiroth sits down in the only chair that isn’t occupied by a tall stack of paper or books. He knows that Shinra will throw him out into the field again, likely after some paltry counselling. Several people close to him have died in the past few months, after all. He was hoping somebody was listening in on the cameras when he admitted to Zack that he wanted to leave Shinra. But, it’s been going over and over in his mind, that perhaps he wouldn’t even be  _allowed_  to leave the company. 

He knows too much. His resignation would be on the pain of death. He would never be free of the Shinra, ever. Turks would be monitoring his every move, of course. Even as a free man, there would be somebody in a black suit around every corner, sitting near him in a restaurant, and bugging any room he happened to spend time in. He also knew from experience that Shinra weren’t above putting a bullet between the eyes of anybody who was considered to have leaked vital company information.

Briefly, Sephiroth entertains the idea of calling a lawyer, to sue Shinra for the rights to his own bodily autonomy. Of course, this lawyer would have to be quite a miracle worker to win a lawsuit against the richest company on the planet. The barrister could be plied with billions of Gil, and it wouldn’t matter. Shinra’s own team of lawyers have squashed even the most high profile lawsuits from disgruntled former employees and ecological interest groups.

Perhaps he needs to make a big mess — big enough for the Shinra Company to notice that their abused attack hound has gone rogue. Passive resistance and looking around for legal aid won’t help. Affirmative action needs to take place.

This library and laboratory has sat here for the past twenty years, almost untouched. Shinra still own the Nibelheim Manor, but rarely use it. Sometimes conferences are held there, but the attendees would never, ever know that they were sitting directly above a basement where atrocious experiments had taken place.

Sephiroth’s phone buzzes with yet another e-mail from Fair. He ignores it.

The content of the books and the papers disgusts Sephiroth to the core. Hojo vividly describes experimentation on human and monster anatomy as if it were just a simple day at the office. In his notes, everything is eerily cold and clinical. Hojo watches his own infant son go through these medical trials and never once thinks to argue with himself that this is unethical. Not in his writing, at least.

The knowledge that he is a monster is what terrifies Sephiroth the most. He had always had a suspicion that he was ‘different’ in some way. After all, few children scored so highly on intellectual and physical aptitude tests, or were given experimental Mako treatments, escorted to the lab every other afternoon by the woman who functioned as both his tutor and his bodyguard. But never as his mother. According to these notes, she had strictly been told by Hojo that she would be fired if he ever caught word of her acting maternal towards Sephiroth.

Monsters aren’t supposed to have childhoods, after all.

Shinra made ‘Project S’ as a test-run. From what Sephiroth could tell, the company were attempting for an ascended evolution of man. The blood of Jenova, the Ancient, is what runs through his veins. 

Growing up, Sephiroth has silver hair and bright aqua eyes, with cat-like pupils. Very,  _very_ similar to the profile Hojo has written up on Jenova. Of course, people took notice. When Sephiroth was young, and attending school for the first time, the other kids had tried to tease him about it. Others had been curious — until, of course, the teachers made certain that the bullying stopped.

Sephiroth had fallen into a Mako pit. This was the first official lie from Shinra concerning Sephiroth, and the story adopted by the news media when Shinra first went public with his existence. The President, in an incredible show of generosity, had sponsored the poor child from the orphanage he was languishing in, plucking him from obscurity and treating him like his son.

Well, considering that the President already held his own biological son at an arm’s length, their relationship wasn’t much. Dinner once or twice a month. Usually accompanied by Hojo, so the professor could keep an eye on his young ward and make sure he didn’t make any slip-ups in front of the man who was funding his existence.

“The boy showed an aptitude for the military, it was incredible,” President Shinra once said to a talk show host. He continued: “Of course, our ambition is to foster talent at every level...”

The threat of termination had never come to Sephiroth’s mind. The perfect specimen, conditioned into absolute submission. Shinra had put so much money into everything about Sephiroth. Hojo’s pet monster, just another means to an end for Shinra. A tool with which to win wars. A tool to manipulate the media, with a huge fan-base of girls who wanted to marry him, and boys who wanted to join the military, inspired by tales of his heroics.

Hojo described the experimentation leading to Sephiroth’s birth as a “perfect accident.”  It was written there on paper, plain as day. 

Experiments leading up to the end of the 1980s had been conducted to get the same results as Sephiroth… and each time, they had failed. The children were born  as monsters, or with terrible powers or some other form of crippling mutation. Many were sealed inside the nearby Mako reactor, or worse, terminated.

Sephiroth had never wanted to consider his strange intuition that told him that there was something more to his and Hojo’s relationship. Hojo had been the one to tell him that his mother’s name was Jenova, but had always been evasive when asked who Sephiroth’s father was.

Now he knew.

Not that there was a family resemblance. Sephiroth didn’t have the particular humped back that afflicted Hojo, nor did he share his dark hair and eyes. His facial features were sharp and attractive; Hojo’s were sallow and gave him a harsh appearance.

The diaries from the late 1970s spoke of his mother — Lucrecia — as ‘meeting with’ a Turk. Hojo’s tone in these writings came across as rather jealous. But, the professor had also refused to elaborate any further. It wasn’t difficult to put two and two together and presume an extramarital affair had taken place. What was better, really? Being the son of a Turk, or the son of a Shinra scientist? Either way, the Company would have dug their claws into him as soon as they could.

Professor Gast had been the one responsible for Jenova in the first place. A scientist with a specialised interest in archaeology, he had led the project that unearthed what he described in his journals as the ‘last living Ancient in stasis.’ Of course, the name of the tribe was actually the Cetra — and there were, in fact, living Cetra who hadn't sealed themselves away in crystal. 

A terrible oversight on the professor’s part, but, according to Hojo’s notes, rectified once he met the Cetran woman Ilfalna. Then he had become rather obsessed, making certain that he read up on the lore of the Ancient world, asking Shinra for further funding into anthropological and historical research into humanity’s forebears. Hojo’s writing took on a gleeful note when he mentioned Gast’s failure to pitch his ideas to the board.

Gast seemed to have disappeared shortly after. Hojo left a simple note: ‘Good riddance.’

The Jenova Project had continued regardless. Hojo’s writings became more and more guarded, only offering the most basic data. He had stopped keeping the journal entirely. The last entry read: ‘The light in my life has gone.’

Rage seethed deep within Sephiroth. He had had temper tantrums before — what child didn’t?  — but this anger felt far more… righteous, somehow. He was here because humans had decided to play god. Humans had played at being pathetic, childish gods, destroying the Ancients and their culture, then preying on what remained for their own gains. How dare they.

Somebody needs to pay for this. Douse the world in hellfire and scatter the ashes at some celestial crossroads.

He would make sure of it.


End file.
